Johannesburg Journal

Art That Condemned Apartheid Will End Its Exile

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Published: August 13, 1997

JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 12—
Thirty-five years ago, on a Sunday morning, an unconventional rendition of the Crucifixion was hung in a little church near Cape Town, and created a furor.

Newspaper articles about it appeared that evening and on Monday, and on Tuesday the artist was arrested at his home. The police took him to the church and, pausing only long enough for someone praying in front of it to finish, seized the painting and brought it before the Board of Censors.

Calling it sacrilegious, the censors ''banned'' the painting, making it illegal to display it.

The censors were, perhaps deliberately, missing the point. The painting -- ''Black Christ'' -- was never meant to be a religious statement, but an attack on apartheid.

The artist, Ronald Harrison, had depicted Chief Albert J. Luthuli, the president of the outlawed African National Congress who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960, as the crucified Christ flanked by two Roman soldiers, one piercing his side with a spear. One of the soldiers bore the face of Prime Minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid; the other that of his Justice Minister, John Vorster.

The painting passed from public view in South Africa. But it gained a new audience elsewhere.

A few days later, a CBS News crew flew in from the United States and secretly filmed the 22-year-old artist with his work.

After that, with the help of the Anglican Church and the Swedish and Dutch Embassies, the picture was rolled up in linoleum and smuggled to England aboard a cargo plane. There it was displayed in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and used to raise money for anti-apartheid activities.

''Oh, did that make the security police furious,'' Mr. Harrison, now 57, said in a recent interview. He had already been interrogated, he said, but after the painting resurfaced in Britain, ''the torture started.''

''They would knock down my door in the middle of the night and take me to the police station,'' he recalled. ''They would make me sit there in my underpants and be interrogated for hours on end. You'd get an elbow in the eye, then they'd threaten you with sodomy, or tell you they know you've got a family. They'd make you sit in a cold little cell for hours, and you'd hear screaming from another cell.

''Then they'd come in with smug looks -- oh, they were subtle. They wanted to know the names of the people who'd smuggled it out. Then, when they were finished with you, they'd drop you off in the middle of nowhere.''

That routine continued for four or five years, he said. Even as recently as 10 years ago, he said, security forces kept ''dropping by to see if I'd left the country.''

Meanwhile, the painting was exhibited around Europe and helped raise millions to assist the African National Congress leaders, including Nelson Mandela, who faced charges of sabotage against the Government in the 1964 Rivonia trial.

Then the painting disappeared, and was largely forgotten. Except by its creator, Mr. Harrison, who has since made a living designing garment labels for a Cape Town company and has continued to paint religious works, which he donates to churches.

Of his most famous painting, he said, ''I don't know where I got the guts to paint it.'' ''But I was a very angry young man,'' he went on, ''and I wanted to express my disgust with what was going on, and I thought the brush was mightier than the pen. Chief Luthuli had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, and this vicious apartheid Government was banning him as a subversive.''

Several months ago, Mr. Harrison was incensed to learn that the anti-apartheid art hung in the halls of the South African Parliament to replace the portraits of apartheid-era white leaders was almost entirely the work of European and American artists.

''We faced the struggle,'' he said of himself and other South African artists. ''People overseas doing anti-apartheid work mean nothing to me.''

Hoping to find his painting again, he approached the Department of Foreign Affairs, which approached the British Council, which in turn approached Ruiradh Nicoll, the South Africa correspondent for The Observer, a British newspaper.

Mr. Nicoll's article about the missing painting appeared in London last month, and was read by 90-year-old Julius Baker, a native of South Africa, who scribbled across the top of his newspaper: ''Well, I'll be damned. I've got it.''

It was leaning against a wall in the basement of his home in Hampstead, a London suburb.

In 1961, Mr. Baker was a left-wing lawyer and bookstore owner in Johannesburg when he was arrested under state-of-emergency laws and accused of helping raise money and disseminate propaganda for the African National Congress.

He escaped, he said in a recent telephone interview, by a fluke in the law that released him from custody for one day. ''One of the police said, 'I'll get you tomorrow,' '' Mr. Baker said. ''And I left for Swaziland.''

Ultimately, he made it to England, where he continued to agitate against apartheid and raised a family.

After the painting had been taken on tour around Europe, he said, another anti-apartheid crusader, John Collins, a canon at St. Paul's, asked if anyone had room to store it.

''I had a basement,'' Mr. Baker said. ''So we put it up on bricks to protect it from the damp and covered it with cardboard and timber so the glass wouldn't be broken. I said 'Don't leave it too long.'

''But,'' he concluded, ''time passed.''

It is not entirely clear who now owns the painting. The Church of England plans to return it to South Africa, where it will probably be displayed later this year for the centenary of St. Luke's, the church in Salt River where it was hanging when the police came for it, and then be moved to St. George's Cathedral in Cape Town. That is, unless the South African National Gallery, also in Cape Town, expresses an interest in what has now become a work of historical importance.

As for Mr. Harrison, he says he doesn't want a cent.

''If there's any money from it, it can be used for Nelson Mandela's Children's Fund,'' he said. ''I don't want anyone to accuse me of climbing on the gravy train.''

He said Mr. Baker told him he wants to return to South Africa next June to see the painting on display again and, Mr. Harrison added: ''He said, 'Ronnie -- then we're going to party.' ''

Photo: Canon John Collins of St. Paul's Cathedral in London displayed the ''Black Christ'' in 1962 as part of an anti-apartheid campaign. After 35 years the painting is being returned to South Africa. (The Guardian)